Guy Moreton

Biography

Guy Moreton is an associate professor of photography in the School of Art, Design and Fashion at Southampton Solent University. His research engages with the cultural histories and representation of landscape, place, memory, hauntology and ruination in literature, art and philosophy. He is co-author, with Alec Finlay and Michael Nedo of 'Ludwig Wittgenstein – There Where You Are Not' (Black Dog Publishing, London) and his work has been published, presented and exhibited widely in the UK and internationally.

His photographs are represented in public and private collections, including the University of Southampton and the collection of modern and contemporary European art in Southampton City Art Gallery.

Visit Guy's pages on the University's CREADM (centre for research and enterprise in art, design and media) website.

Guy is an external examiner at the University of Brighton, College of Arts and Humanities; and the Department for Media, Culture and Language at the University of Roehampton, London. He has been an external peer reviewer (research) for the School of Arts and Media, Plymouth University.

He has also been external academic adviser for the taught MA Photography programme at Plymouth University; and external academic adviser for the school of creative arts at the University of Cumbria, and the University of Essex.

Press

Follow the link below to see comments made in the press about Guy Moreton...

"Because prepositions matter, we might say that Wittgenstein and Thomas – like Guy Moreton – are interested not in how we think about landscape, but how we think with it, how we think through it, or even more radically, how we are thought by it. Moreton’s fine work both documents and extends the tradition of interest in this subject. He has for almost a decade been drawn to landscapes in which – no, through which – major thinking has occurred, and he has been even more specifically drawn to the landscapes of male European émigré thinkers for whom exile, or more precisely a sustained out- of-placeness, has been an intellectually creative condition."Robert Macfarlane, Unrecounted.

"Guy Moreton's photographs of the ruins of St Andrew's, Walberswick, captured with a 10x8 inch camera, we get a sense of that dissolution. Lonely, yes, but the images are so dense, rich and sensual we nearly forget that they are recording the continual process of decay. Moreton reminds us that faith erected these places, places that were once inhabited, active, hopeful. They are symbols of eternal life crumbling into dust and ash. By portraying them in quiet dignity, he gives us an assurance of their still-sacred value."Sarah Emily Miano, The Guardian (Saturday Review).

"Moreton's large-scale images concentrate on the ruins of Dunston Pillar, Britain's only land lighthouse, which was built in 1751 to guide travellers towards Lincoln. As an isolated and out-of-place monument with a resonant history, Dunston Pillar might have dropped straight out of Sebald; and Moreton's photographs are the exhibition's closest transpositions of Sebald's writings into another medium. Here, the exhibition seems to be about circling Sebald's work - just as Moreton's photographs circle the Pillar, and Saturn's rings encircle the planet."Jonathan Taylor, The Times Literary Supplement.

"And Guy Moreton's photographs of the Yare and Waveney Valley Marshes show landscapes in which each element–air, earth and water–seems to have saturated the others, rendering everything indistinct, letting all landmarks slide towards the horizon, preserving only the atmosphere of the place."Brian Dillon, Airlocked in Waterlog–Journeys Around an Exhibition, Film and Video Umbrella London.

"Or consider the photograph by Guy Moreton of all that remains of Ludwig Wittgenstein's house overlooking Lake Eidsvatnet in Norway…They are both beautiful works of art, certainly, as the forest is, as the fjord is, and they invite our attention, yet they are both so much more than what we can see."Jeremy Millar, Place, Thames and Hudson, London and New York.

Recent publications

Guy's publications include conference papers, book chapters, exhibitions and more. Follow the link for a list of his recent publications...

Recent exhibitions include 'New Acquisitions' at Southampton City Art Gallery, 'Wall to Wall' at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University curated by Mariam Zulfiqar and Film and Video Umbrella London; and 'Unrecounted' at Solent Showcase with a publication essay by Robert Macfarlane.

His work has been critically reviewed in American Book Review, Photo-Eye (USA), The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, BBC Radio 4, The Spectator, Art Monthly, Art Review and Camera Austria.

He has worked with publishers including Black Dog Publishing, Thames and Hudson, Prestel, Palgrave Macmillan, Routledge, Pocketbooks and Morning Star Press Edinburgh.

He has written essays and had published critical reviews of artists including Thomas Struth, William Christenberry, and Tomoko Yoneda.

Research interests

Guy is particularly interested in the relationship between photography and literature through the traditions of travel writing, nature-writing, modernity and the manifestation of architecture in the imagination...

Guy is particularly interested in the relationship between photography and literature through the traditions of travel writing, nature-writing, modernity and the manifestation of architecture in the imagination.

His research uses photography to explore ideas of exile, wilderness and trauma in the landscape of Kurt Schwitters' Merz constructions in England and Norway. An ongoing theme in his visual practice is the complex relationship between landscape and thought, particularly through the writing of WG Sebald, and in the topography and character of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical thinking during his self-imposed retreat to the remote west coast of Norway.

Guy’s research was submitted for the 2008 University Research Assessment Exercise, and the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.

Work in progress

Guy's research uses photography to explore ideas of exile, wilderness and trauma in the landscape of Kurt Schwitters' Merz constructions in England and Norway...

Guy's research uses photography to explore ideas of exile, wilderness and trauma in the landscape of Kurt Schwitters' Merz constructions in England and Norway; and an ongoing theme in his visual practice is the complex relationship between landscape and thought, particularly through the writing of WG Sebald, and in the topography and character of Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical thinking during his self-imposed retreat to the remote west coast of Norway. He is currently working on a conference paper and exhibition 'In Place of Architecture' at the Bonington Gallery Nottingham, organized and hosted by Nottingham Trent University.